Jordan Martin was impressed to hear Kindred Healthcare praise the benefits of SD-WAN with Viptela. For one, they were seeing cost reduction of 25% at their largest sites after the switch. He really appreciates that Viptela seems to be customer focused first. This is a really great real world study on how Viptela’s SD-WAN solution can make a difference.
The Quest for Verification with Forward Networks
Forward Networks gave a presentation fresh out of stealth mode at Networking Field Day, and it certainly made an impression with Rich Stroffolino. He outlines how the company is doing their network monitoring. They model all possible places a packet can go on a network in a constantly updating software model. This allows you to not only react when problems occur, but also for better planning and provisioning, since you can model traffic very accurately in the software model. We’ll wait to see how their solution gets deployed in an actual enterprise, but on a theoretical level it’s fascinating.
Docker is the New Twitter
Rich Stroffolino has an interesting hypothesis here. He sees Docker in a very similar situation to Twitter circa 2011. It’s an extremely popular product, but with an ecosystem of support companies that extend it’s inherent functionality. Twitter decided to subsume more and more of this into what it natively provided, edging out the companies that once complimented it. Will Docker follow the same path? Rich points out why some of their situations are a little different as well.
Transform and Scale Out with Isilon
Rich Stroffolino gives a rundown of the Dell EMC presentation from Tech Field Day last month. They highlighted their latest hard disk offerings for their Isilon platform. This includes a look at the history of the platform, their latest node offerings, and their hybrid flash solution. Sadly, he was not treated to a look at their new all flash Nitro array. Still, Rich offers some interesting insight on how the scale of Dell EMC differed from some of the emerging vendors he also saw at Tech Field Day.
Forward Thinking Backups
Rich Stroffolino takes a look at what Rubrik presented at Tech Field Day earlier this month. They take a extremely focused approach to backups. Their solution allows for backups to their various rack mounted “Brik” devices from various sites with simple scale out and management, and even allow for seamless flow over to S3-compliant cloud storage. While not as expansive as other vendors, the focus of Rubrik makes them stand out.
State of the Industry: Network Analytics
Gestalt IT just debuted a new feature, a weekly State of the Industry post. For their first week, they’re looking at the state of network analytics. They take a look at two competing methodologies to the problem. The first is SolarWinds NetPath tool, which sits in the network. The SolarWinds approach seems to take the ideas behind existing tools, and looks to perfect them. The other method is Forward Networks, which is presenting a top-down approach to do live mapping purely in software. Both are interesting, and point to further investment and development in the space going into 2017.
The Power of ONUG And What It Means To You
Tom Holllingsworth takes a look at what makes the Open Networking User Group special. Unlike other interest groups that bully their way into short term solutions in opposition to vendors, ONUG put together groups to solve communally agreed upon issues, to be presented to vendors as a solution, not a demand. Tom lays out the case why ONUG is setup to succeed in the long term, using their success at moving SD-WAN from a tech demo to a full fledged enterprise solution in just a few short years. Give it a read and try not be be excited with what they’ve got coming down the pipe!
The Igneous Synthesis
Igneous Systems proposes to offer a storage appliance that will allow you to get the benefits of Infrastructure as a Service while keep all your storage local. Rich Stroffolino gave their Tech Field Day presentation was impressed with how the company was able to synthesize the two aspects. As he points out, this often isn’t an easy task, but Igneous gives you robust local protection in their all in one storage device, while giving you cloud-centric fleet management of the entire device network across all customers.
DriveScale Gives You Ethernet With a Side of Storage
I wrote up a review of what DriveScale showed off at Tech Field Day earlier this month. Their approach to disaggregating storage within the server rack is really interesting. As opposed to other designs I’ve seen from vendors, they offer something that’s remarkably open and adaptable. While they’re still in the appliance licensing game, they seem more interested in creating a unique architecture to make this happen. Worth the read if only to see their founders’ impressive resumes!
Aruba’s Mobile First Vision: Much More Than Connecting Devices
Aruba’s Mobile First Vision: Much More Than Connecting Devices
Aruba’s Mobile First Vision: Much More Than Connecting Devices
Aruba’s Mobile First Vision: Much More Than Connecting Devices
VulcanCast Follow Up – A few thoughts on 60TB SSDs
VulcanCast Follow Up – A few thoughts on 60TB SSDs
Tech Field Day Extra at ONUG Spring 2016 Live Blog – Day 2
Tech Field Day Extra at ONUG Spring 2016 Live Blog – Day 2